Focus Keyword
-
Hi,
I have 2 doubts regarding keywords SEO optimization.
1. I would like to optimize the keyword "liquidation channel". The thing is, in my copy/page title/URL/etc it doesn't make a lot of sense to use this exact keyword, but rather "liquidation channels", in plural. Will I rank higher for liquidation channel anyway? And if so, to which extent? (e.g. about 70%...?)
2. I would like to optimize the homepage for the word "liquidation", but found out that some combinations using this keyword (like "liquidation sales" or "liquidation auctions") would have higher traffic and might work better for some pages. I understand I would still be ranking higher for the keyword liquidation, but to which extent? If it's 100% because the keyword is always included, does it makes sense to use 1-word keywords or should we always focus on multiple word keywords?
Would the same apply for 2-words keywords vs 3-words keywords, like "wholesale liquidation" SEO rankings being applied when optimizing "wholesale liquidation sales"?
Thank you,
-
I agree with Bob, and I want to add that one-word keywords tend to be _extremely_difficult to rank for. Your best bet is to focus your pages on the key phrases that make the most sense based on the topics of those pages.
Have you ever read Cyrus Shepard's "Keywords to Concepts: The Lazy Web Marketer's Guide to Smart Keyword Research?" It's a bit on the older side, but is still quite relevant. It might help you wrap your head around some of the intricacies of keyword targeting, and how search engines are learning to understand topics and intent.
-
Hi Via Trading,
Difficult questions since you’re asking about a border situation on one of all the different ranking factors out there. About a year ago I found myself trying to dive this deep into specific ranking factors as well and I found a lot of conflicts with “best practices” for ranking factors and what would make the most sense for users. Beside these conflicts I found there is a lot of exact (percentages for example) information not available in the SEO community. Looking at your questions, I think nobody is willing to invest his time in setting up large scale tests to find out how these two are correlating. Not because the question isn’t legit, but because there are bigger ranking factors that we don’t fully understand.
When you find yourself diving this deep into a ranking factor I advise you to stick to what does make the most sense for your visitors. This way you don’t do any over optimization and you can quickly switch investing your time in more important aspects of your website (content, promotion and just plain making your product awesome).
To help you further on your question I will try to give you some more information (and my view on this topic) about your question.
1. If it makes more sense to use “liquidation channels” I would go for that one since your page will probably be about multiple channels. If this is the case then just switching your URL won’t make your page content go about one channel, it would still have content about multiple channels on it. Search Engines do a great job at recognizing this so if you want to rank for ”liquidation channel” you should probably change the context of your webpage as well to become the perfect match for search engines. That said, I think you a web page about multiple liquidation channels can be very helpful when I look for one. In my experience you can rank for both keywords with either of the URL’s. Here is a screenshot I just took about a situation like yours I have on our own website.
http://i.imgur.com/pkfdAz3.png
With the keywords “tattoo shop” and “tattoo shops” we found it harder to rank on the singular then on the plural but with both keywords we managed to get a #1 position (we didn’t specifically linkbuild on any of those terms). Just like you I through changing my URL would increase my chances to rank for the singular (since this keyword has the most traffic). So when we expanded our business to a new industry (driving schools / rijschool in dutch). We used the singular in the URL but still found us ranking better on the plural. My bet is that this is because our page is about multiple driving schools and not just one driving school. Besides that I think our backlinks help a little to push this result as well so it’s not 100 exact science.
Backlinks are an important factor to consider as well, if you change your page about a plural into a singular but your content is still about a plural you will find other websites using anchor texts with the plural instead of the singular. So in the end, you will still have a harder time with the singular then with the plural.
2. The quick answer (this comment is already getting way out of hand ), it won’t be the full 100% per cent since a general term like that often triggers some results as Wikipedia or other descriptive sources. You will definitely have a correlation with this term but don’t expect too much from it. Your best change to also score on this term with your homepage is to make sure your whole domain is about this subject. That would make you a better fit for a general term like this. In my opinion you should focus your homepage on a more specific term that does the best job to describe your website or main product or service.
I hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Keyword optimisation
I have a few questions regarding keywords that we are wanting to optimize on our site. This may be a bit basic so if this had already been answered elsewhere let me know. Question 1: How many time can I refer to the one word on different pages on the site ? Is there any rules around this? In theory the keywords we are looking to include will be relevant to these pages. **Question 2: ** Should I use different variation of the key word or is the one variant fine? Question 3: Looking at the search terms people use from google analytics to get to our site, there is a lot of people using the phrase “sliding windows New Zealand. Should I write this on the page exactly as “sliding doors New Zealand “ or is “sliding doors” fine? Its just that the former phrase doesn't really work with our communication. I look forward to your advice!
Keyword Research | | aplnzjune180 -
Focus Keyword
Hi everyone! I am pretty new to SEO so all the help would be great. Does every webpage on our website need a focus keyword for example like the about us page. We have webpages for every location in the UK - Would it be helpful if the location webpages had a focus keyword also? Just to note that I am using Yoast on Wordpress. Many thanks,
Keyword Research | | SMCCoachHire
Aqib0 -
How to choose a Keyword
I searched around for this answer first but got information overload. I write a photography blog and tonight I will put up a post of photography from around Jiyugaoka Train Station. I will probably call the post Around Jiyugaoka Station or Around Jiyugaoka or something like that. I like in Jiyugaoka (a part of Tokyo) so I have other posts that I have keyworded for Jiyugaoka. What is the best way to determine what is the best derivative of 'Jiyugaoka Station' to choose for the best traffic? I assume I could enter them in to manually into the Keyword Analysis but is there is easier way that would give recommendations?
Keyword Research | | ShootTokyo0 -
Keyword tool
Does anyone know of any good keyword tools that will help me find and then maintain a list of keywords? I currently use Google adwords and now the keyword tool from Moz but I am looking for something that will help me find and generate keywords not just get statistics about them. Thank you.
Keyword Research | | shiftins1 -
Google Keyword Tool Category Selector
Has anyone developed any useful techniques for using the category selector in the GKT? Perhaps in conjunction with a site URL. Always looking for something better
Keyword Research | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Google Trends not Consistent with Google Keyword Tool
Hi Everyone, I was doing a little Google Trends research on Real Estate and narrowed it down to my state. I have found that on Trends it is showing a two or three towns above the one I am living in showing that it gets a lot of search volume. They will put the top one as a 1 and then the others below it as like .87 or .675 etc. I am taking that as 87% of the top one or 67.5% of the top city in search volume. I checked these numbers against the Google Keyword Tool and found that my town still gets more exact visits (4 times the amount of the one Google Trends ranks #1) I can't see the actual search volume on Google Trends but was wondering....Which one do you trust? I have done some testing on it and realized that for the most part, the numbers in the keyword tool RARELY change. Do they maybe update it once per year? FYI: As you know I trended real estate so what I did on the Keyword tool is "Town State Real Estate" and looked at both Broad and Exact searches. I would appreciate any guidance you guys can give on how I should be paying attention to this data. Thanks!
Keyword Research | | blake-766240 -
Best keyword research tool
Okay, what is the BEST keyword research tool? I've heard all across the board, but I'm looking for preferrably a free tool, but just want to use one that can do competitive research, as well as find me a ton of long tail.
Keyword Research | | azguy0 -
Is there a better keyword tool than google's adwords keyword tool?
I have heard a lot of people say not to trust the results of google adword's keyword tool. Is there a better tool out there that i am not aware of that can judge local monthly and global monthly search volume?
Keyword Research | | adriandg1